Presidency of La Rioja reserved a hospital bed for Ghali two days before his arrival

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Eliseo Sastre, Head of the Office of the Presidency of La Rioja and right hand of the regional president Concha Andreu, reserved the bed that Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front, was going to need in the Hospital of Logroño two days before his arrival in Spain. According to the statement of Alberto LJ, manager of the hospital center, to which EL ESPAÑOL has had access, Sastre consulted him “if it was possible to enter a patient within the scope of humanitarian aid”.

The Manager of the San Pedro de Logroño Hospital revealed this detail to the Provincial Information Brigade of the National Police on July 21. He declared how Sastre would have confirmed the day and time when the patient arrived at the Zaragoza military base.

This would indicate, according to the accusations, that perhaps the operation to introduce Ghali began to be forged several days before, and through different channels, and that not only would it have been cooked at the highest levels of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also more actors would have participated in these events.

Sastre has already been summoned as a witness before the judge to offer his version of events. Meanwhile, the magistrate in charge of the investigation, Rafael Lasala, of the Court of Instruction Number 7 of Zaragoza, has cited the former Minister of Foreign Affairs as investigated Arancha González Laya, like its Chief of Staff, Camilo Villarino.

Laya will testify on October 4 at 1:00 p.m. That same day, at 12.30 pm, José María Muriel Palomino, former technical secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is scheduled to testify as a witness.

González Laya is listed as being investigated for alleged crimes of prevarication, concealment and falsification in a private document. So far, the investigating magistrate has not set a date for his questioning. The summons of the former minister as investigated was requested on September 14 by the lawyer Juan Carlos Navarro, and the other accusation, led by Antonio Urdiales, joined the request.

A bed for “a friend”

The declaration of the head of the health center was in turn prompted by that of his subordinate, Fernando MS, Transplant and Critical Care Coordinator of the San Pedro de Logroño Hospital.

In his appearance before the magistrate, he assured that it was the April 16th, two days before the arrival of the Polisario leader, when the hospital manager wrote to him. He commented that “a friend of his” asks him for an ICU bed for a Covid patient from abroad.

On the 17th, the hospital manager confirms that this person will be admitted. It doesn’t tell you the date yet. The following day, Sunday April 18, he calls him at noon to tell him that Ghali will arrive that same afternoon and that there is an ambulance from the Riojano Health Service that will be sent to carry out the transfer.

In that same statement, the Transplant and Critical Care Coordinator of the San Pedro de Logroño Hospital indicates to the judge that he was struck by the fact that the identity of Mohamed Benbatouche did not correspond to the data that appeared in the medical reports on Ghali.

The date indicated by the health worker and the data offered by the hospital manager are of some relevance, since it contrasts with the information offered by Camilo Villarino, Laya’s right-hand man, in his statement as being investigated in the case.

Villarino affirmed before the judge that it was the same day 18, the one of the arrival of Ghali, when the minister informed him of the operation that they were going to have to carry out to introduce him discreetly in the country.

The Chiefs of Staff

The Government’s decision to hide these events from Morocco led to a major diplomatic crisis and the largest avalanche of immigrants in Ceuta remembered, since some 10,000 people crossed the border in just 24 hours due to the inaction of the Moroccan police.

On June 2, after testifying before Judge Santiago Pedraz for the causes of genocide, torture and illegal detention that he had opened in the National Court, Ghali returned to Algiers in another medicalized plane from the Pamplona airport. There, no documentation was required either.

Another of the data that would reinforce this thesis and that Villarino offered in his statement, revealed by EL ESPAÑOL, was that the first news he had of what was going to happen was four days before the events. That Thursday April 15, Isabel Valldecabres, Director of the Cabinet of the former First Vice President of the Government Carmen Calvo, called him to ask if he knew anything about it.

“He asked me if it was true that it was being valued.” Villarino told him that he had no idea what he was referring to.

As a result of these affirmations, the accusations have asked to include in the procedure the testimony of the former First Vice President and her chief of staff, as well as Susana Crisóstomo, the chief of staff of Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska. The latter already has a date to appear before the court. Both have been appointments to testify as witnesses for the cause.

In a letter last Monday, the lawyer Antonio Urdiales demanded the summons of Crisóstomo when he understood that the department directed by Marlaska he was “aware” of the arrival of the polisario leader to Spanish territory. “Except that the presence of Ghali in Logroño, on April 18, 2021, it would not have been revealed to the National Police by an act of extrasensory revelation, the logical and normal thing is that the Ministry of the Interior was aware of the operation, “he said.

Urdiales maintained the relevance of summoning the Chief of Staff of the Minister of the Interior “in view of the fact that the ambulance that transferred to Ghali from Zaragoza to Logroño she was escorted by police forces “.

Camilo Villarino, acknowledged that he received orders from Laya to manage the entry of the leader of the Polisario Front and to do so “with the utmost discretion.” That same day, Villarino got down to work and wrote to the Lieutenant General and Second Chief of the Air Staff Francisco Javier Fernández Sánchez. He asked that Ghali not be checked at all. “Who has to know, already knows.”

The judge’s investigation is aimed, therefore, at elucidating whether the decision was made directly by Minister Laya or, as her Chief of Staff stated, the order could come from higher up: “He told me that the decision had been made. No I think it was her alone by herself and before herself. The Government is not a kingdom of taifa “.

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